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Archive for June, 2012

Because I wanted to work on mindless knitting while watching the NHL Playoffs, I managed to get 10 puffs done during month 10, bringing the grand total to 111!! Right now I’m working on knitting second puffs out of the mini skeins I got for Christmas.

When I take the next monthly photo I am going to measure the size all of the puffs take up to see how much bigger I want the quilt to be. I originally thought that I would need approximately 400 puffs to get a blanket the size I wanted, but now that I would technically be more than 25% there I would have a better idea of exactly how many more puffs I need to make.

The problem is, I like making puffs, and I sort of don’t want to stop when I get to 400! Maybe I will always have a Beekeeper’s Quilt on my needles. I can make one for Tim or I can make one for someone else.

On Sunday we spent some time gardening at my mom’s house. Since we were so close to the LYS from which my mom got my gift card for my birthday, we decided to stop in.

There was one particular type of yarn I zeroed in on right away. It was this beautiful silk lace weight yarn by Schaefer Yarn. I wanted to look at all of the yarn in the store, but I just kept coming back to this one. As I was looking at it, I noticed that the yarn was named Andrea! Perfect! Once I realized that, I figured it had to be mine.

The one thing that threw me was the cost. It was 1000 yards of yarn, but I never spend that much money on one skein of yarn. But then I thought about it. First, I had a gift card. What better to buy with a gift card than something you like but would normally never splurge on for yourself? Second, when I thought about it, I realized that whenever I saw silk lace weight yarn in stores I always wanted to buy it. This isn’t the first time I’ve been drawn to this type of yarn. I’ve wanted it for years.

Once I decided I would actually buy the yarn, I had to choose a color. Since it was lace weight my initial inclination was to find a solid color, but I didn’t think the solid colors there would look good on me. There was one colorway where the colors were similar enough that I thought it would still show a lace pattern well but I didn’t really like the color. I tried once to knit lace with highly variegated yarn, and that didn’t work out so well.

I narrowed it down to two colorways. I started looking at the tags and noticed that the colorways were named after women who had accomplished amazing things. Since there were two colors I liked a lot, I chose based on the story. I chose the Elena Piscopia colorway. She was the first woman to be awarded a PhD. I have a PhD! Perfect!

So here it is!

The picture doesn’t do it justice. It’s very shiny and the colors are stronger.

I started looking at projects using this colorway on Ravelry. I was afraid that the differences in color would make it difficult to find the appropriate pattern. I found <a href="mitchy's da Vinci shawl and I think it’s absolutely gorgeous. I hope whatever I make with my pretty new skein of yarn turns out half as pretty!

A few weeks ago, Tim spent a few days/evenings at my mom’s house working on the garden. We expanded the garden this year to five rows instead of four. We added some new vegetables, such as Asian radishes, kohlrabi, baby bok choi, and eggplant. Another change we made this year is that, instead of planting the whole garden all at once, we are planting in phases so that we can harvest some vegetables more than once and spread it out.

Last week we were back at my mom’s house, and we were able to see some progress.

We planted two bell pepper plants, both of which one tiny little pepper started. Last week we noticed that the peppers had grown quite a bit.

Unfortunately I didn’t put anything else in the picture for scale, but the pepper is at least two or three times the size as it was the day we planted it.

The radishes started coming up, too.

They should be ready to harvest in a week or two, and then we will plant some more. I think we got three harvests of radishes last year, and we are hoping for at least that much this year.

Finally, the shallots. Last year the shallots and garlic we planted didn’t work out so well, but we are trying again this year. We couldn’t find any shallot bulbs, so we planted ripe shallots instead to see what we would get.

Shallot tops! This photo was taken last week, and today it was at least twice the size. We figured we can use the shallot tops as we would green onions. I did some research this afternoon and learned that you can also use them in place of chives, and can even dry them out and use them as a seasoning. We planted four shallots and they are growing really well, so we are going to have a lot of these. We might be forced into drying some of them or they might go to waste. We cut off a couple of sprigs today, making the shallot tops the first harvest of the season.

A few weeks back I dug Gerda’s Scarf, the double knit scarf that was supposed to be ready for last winter but wasn’t, out of the black hole in my office where UFOs go to hide. I’m determined to have it done in time for this coming winter. The last time I posted progress pictures of this project I had just gotten started. Since then I’ve made more progress. You can actually see the full pattern now.

Right side:

Wrong side:

This is the project I’ve been taking to stitch n’ bitch each week. Well, the weeks I go. I’ve been good about working on it there. But here’s the thing. This scarf essentially can be split into 13 parts: there is the beginning and end, and then 11 pattern repeats in between. How many pattern repeats have I completed? Almost two. I think I’m less than 5 rows away from completing the second repeat. At this rate I will not finish before next winter.

It’s difficult to work on this project regularly as I can’t work on it while watching television. It’s not mindless. I can have a conversation, but not look at anything else. Last time I was at stitch n’ bitch I made a vow to knit at least one row a night. Some nights it will turn into more than one row, some nights it would just be one row, but at least progress will be made. That was 12 days ago. Guess how many rows I’ve knit on the scarf since then? If you guessed zero, you would be correct.

I know. I KNOW. It’s just one row a night. How hard can it be? But when playoff hockey is on, when we’re trying to watch the shows on the DVR before it explodes, well, it doesn’t get done. I’m finally going to do it. After I post this I’m going to work on this scarf until dinner is ready or Game 2 of the Stanley Cup Finals starts. Whichever comes first.